Why the new Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is skipping Xbox and PlayStation 5

The fighting game community reacted very strongly to the surprise announcement of the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, but some fans quickly realized they may not be able to play the iconic titles on their current hardware.

Despite the MvC collection being revealed during this week’s Nintendo Direct, Capcom is also releasing the arcade staples on PlayStation 4 and Steam as well as the Nintendo Switch, which leaves out the PlayStation 5 — and importantly, the Xbox ecosystem completely.

After doing some more digging and talking to those involved with game development, it seems we have some answers as to why the Marvel collection is skipping PS5 and the Xbox Series X|S as well as likely ones for the Xbox One.

Since Capcom began creating their own compilations in-house again around 2017 or 2018 with the likes of the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle and Mega Man X Legacy Collections, they built the titles on MT Framework.

MT Framework dates back all the way to Dead Rising and Lost Planet where it’d become the proprietary game engine for Capcom to use throughout the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era until it slowly stopped being used for new titles around 2015 for the most part (besides Monster Hunter World’s upgraded version).

While we don’t have direct confirmation yet that the Marvel vs. Capcom collection also uses MT Framework, it appears to be built on the same skeleton as the Capcom Fighting Collection from 2022, which makes it by far the most likely candidate.

The problem with that is, however, MT Framework does not officially support PlayStation 5 nor Xbox Series X|S, so that’s why the Capcom Fighting Collection and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles can’t / don’t have new generation versions.

Capcom has moved on to using RE Engine in their new original titles since Resident Evil 7, so they don’t seem too keen on going back and putting in the extra work on their engine from two generations ago that’s almost 20 years old.

So the same applies to Marvel too, except at least PS5 owners can still buy and play the collection with backwards compatibility through the PS4 version.

But the Capcom Fighting Collection had an Xbox One port. Why doesn’t Marvel get one?

At first, we thought maybe Microsoft changed their policy in the past year or two to make developers release Xbox Series X|S versions of games and not solely on Xbox One.

After talking to a few people more familiar with current game development, however, that doesn’t exactly seem to be the case.

Microsoft reportedly will still let devs release Xbox One games without official Series versions though policy dictates they should still be optimized for the newer consoles.

Windows Central reportedly has a source that claims Capcom likely won’t be bringing any more MT Framework games to Xbox.

According to them, “Capcom has no pipeline for porting older MT Framework titles to Xbox’s modern ERA system.”

So while it may be technically possible to do so, porting more games over to Xbox may not be worth the added cost and development time to Capcom anymore for comparatively lower sales than on PS4, Switch and PC.

This could also help explain the Xbox absence of other recent releases like Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin and the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean Capcom is abandonning the Xbox at all with the latest Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and of course Street Fighter 6 all releasing on Microsoft’s consoles.

Just don’t expect any more collections on Xbox it seems as long as Capcom continues to rely on its versatile yet aged MT Framework engine.

The lack of PS5 and XSX support could hinder the hopes of reinvigorated fans too hoping that Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 would get an updated release on newer hardware with rollback netcode too.

The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is slated to release later this year on basically everything but Xbox and PS5 (Natively).